Viewfinder for Photos

PIERRE-ALEXIS DUMAS, the Hermès artistic director, spent the afternoon at the Museum of Modern Art taking in its exhibition of studio photography. It had given him, he said Tuesday evening, a yen for the work of Ray K. Metzker, which is part of the show.

Mr. Dumas is an appreciator of photography. Though his work at Hermès includes overseeing its many designers and craftspeople, he also manages its sizable collection of art and photography. In addition, he is the president of the Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès, which supports artists through residencies, mentorship, funding and exposure.

“You can create the conditions for something beautiful to happen,” he said. “This is how I see my work in general, as an artistic director.”

Mr. Dumas was not in New York for a quick MoMA visit. He had come for the Aperture Foundation annual benefit (this year honoring the photographer Robert Frank) to announce a new alliance between the Hermès foundation and Aperture. It will include a commission program, for which a French photographer will be sponsored to produce a project in the United States, followed by an American photographer, sponsored to produce one in France. Aperture will also publish books on its projects, and its gallery will become the American site for the Henri Cartier-Bresson International Award, which Hermès supports.

“It’s the kind of thing that has been beyond our means,” said Chris Boot, the executive director of the Aperture Foundation. Mr. Dumas emphasized that the foundation’s attention is on such projects, not itself. “This foundation doesn’t have a venue, a big, expensive building made by a famous architect,” he said, presumably a veiled reference to the Fondation Louis Vuitton, which will open its Frank Gehry-designed home in Paris next week. (Vuitton’s parent company, LVMH, and Hermès were until recently embroiled in a public feud over the size of LVMH’s stake in Hermès.) “Really, we wanted from the beginning to put all the means we have in projects helping people to produce their work.”

Nevertheless, photography in particular has a personal resonance. His father, Jean-Louis Dumas, was a hobbyist who carried a camera everywhere and created a darkroom in the family bathroom.

“I would be a very bad photographer,” Mr. Dumas said. “But I’m good at looking at photography.”